Somehow as we pushed our very
full tummies away from the dining table on Thursday and
moved to the living room to watch TV or entered the
kitchen to converse over washing the dinner dishes, we
all stepped into a different space in time. Not forward
into the future, nor backward to the days of old, not
the twilight zone, nor that place between sleep and
awake, but observing the madness of 5:30 am Friday
morning, most people would probably label it a warped
sense of time.
But the reality is our culture
has given us an official time of waiting, a time to
anxiously and joyfully count down the days until that
magical moment when all the decorating and preparations
are over, the kids are off of school and we can have a
few precious days home with family and friends. A time
of waiting to greet Santa Claus as he comes down that
chimney. Waiting to rip into gayly wrapped presents to
see if we got what we wanted from the toy makers this
year. Waiting for the first snowfall to go skiing,
boarding, shoveling, or sitting in sloshy traffic jams.
Waiting.
Well, this season of waiting
that we have entered has two beautiful words that are
connected with it "hope and expectation." Just ask any
kid that made out his list, checked it twice and was
sorely disappointed on that magical morning. He truly
expected to receive those things for which he hoped, and
sometimes it could still happen. There's always the
exchange counter on Monday morning to remedy the
situation.
I suppose by some stretch of the
imagination, this season of giving - and receiving - and
twinkling lights, evergreen boughs, sumptuous food, and
jolly Christmas songs evoke in us a good understanding
of waiting. Perhaps the youngest members of our families
who are still caught up in the sheer wonder of it all
still don't have that knowledge of hope and expectation
but they will soon catch on. To know that something will
happen, to long for it, to wake up in the morning with
that sudden excitement in your chest that says, maybe
today, maybe today. There is a special tension in the
air as you get closer, you can see it in people's faces,
the transformation of familiar places. The air just
sparkles with it. And then finally, it happens.
If you can isolate that intense
feeling of waiting, then hang on to the emotion and
let's move it over this morning to another concept, one
that lies behind this consumer season, and that is -
waiting for Jesus. Now I'm not talking about giving
token gestures of manger scenes, children's pageants,
Christmas caroling and candlelight services at midnight.
I'm not talking about thinking about the birth of a
special infant, the sweet story of Mary and Joseph,
shepherds and wisemen. That is an event that has already
happened. And reenacting it and celebrating it gets us
close, but not quite. Advent is a season of the church
that asks us to prepare for the second coming of Jesus,
not just reminisces on his first.
The early church didn't focus on
Jesus' birthday anyway. Epiphany was the highlighted
celebration, January 6th, the day set aside in the year
honoring Jesus' baptism, the day when the heavens opened
up and the voice declared him God's son, the one on whom
God's favor rested. On that day, a relatively unknown
child - now man was known as the one through whom we
could know God. Epiphany - to suddenly have a revelation
of something of great magnitude, to suddenly understand
God, to glimpse the heavenly purposes and know your
place in it. WOW!
The awe surrounding such an
event developed within the first few hundred years of
the church a season of preparation - not of festivities
and gift giving, but of prayer and fasting, penitence
and self-denial. They did not focus on the physical
house being beautiful and ready, but on the internal
person, on the heart, the mind, and the spirit. They
tried to clean out the cobwebs, the dirt, the sins and
brighten and enlighten the person as a gift to their
savior for when he would come again in glory.
These days of Advent which
literally mean "coming" were days of refocusing lives on
Jesus. And during these days of contemplation people
became more and more aware of their fellow human beings
and the desperate needs of many that were poor, hungry
and sick, and they spent much time in addressing the
needs of those less fortunate. A far cry from the gift
giving frenzy we participate in today.
The early church also took
Isaiah's prophecy of the coming of Jesus to heart and
worked longingly for peace. Until the Emperor
Constantine made Christianity the state religion, the
followers of Jesus found their lives filled with fear
and persecution, not to mention the violence experienced
in the everyday wars among nations that Rome engaged in.
The vision that Isaiah painted was the future that the
Israelites had waited for and now the Christians too
longed for it. They would wake every morning with hope
and expectation, maybe today, maybe today he will
return. Swords will be beaten into plowshares, spears
into pruning hooks and nation shall not lift up sword
against nation neither shall they learn war any more.
"Let us walk in the light of the Lord."
Jesus had told them what it
would be like waiting. Nobody knows what day it will
happen. Not the angels, not even Jesus himself. And, so
they would just have to remain prepared every day, every
moment. To transform their everyday lives into lives of
hope and expectation of the day when Christ would be all
in all. He reminded them of the days prior to the flood.
No one had a clue what was coming. Everyone except Noah
went about business as usual and then suddenly, it
happened. As sudden as a lightening bolt across the sky,
it was time. The community in which Matthew lived was
one that anticipated the return of Jesus any day, any
moment. It was imminent. And they lived that hope. But
it has been thousands of years by our human reckoning.
What should we make of that? Does that alter the way we
go about our lives? If it has been so long, surely it
will be soon? Or do we even continue to think it might
happen?
But Matthew's gospel has an
interesting tension that we must reckon with. Although
this gospel passage talks about the coming of Jesus in a
future time, the name Emmanuel literally means God with
Us. Now, we may reconcile that by thinking about the
human form of Jesus was when God was with us, but in
chapter 28 of this very same gospel, Jesus' parting
remark to his disciples, "Remember, I am with you
always, to the close of the age."
Maybe our way of thinking about
presence needs some reconsideration. What does it mean
for Jesus to be with us? Are we as humans only capable
of thinking in physical terms? Or is there another
dimension to our sense of what it means to be alive? to
be in heaven? To be with someone? Is there another way
of experiencing time? We experience life in a linear
fashion. This happens, then another thing happens, then
another, but are we only seeing the end results of a
whole lot of events put in motion at the same time
perhaps at the beginning of existence? We don't know how
to experience God except in the life of Jesus.
So, as we anticipate the second
coming of Jesus….the Advent…..do we really have any
concept of what it is we are waiting for? What will it
mean for us? It has been described in cosmic terms, that
the entire universe will be shaken. I've heard it
described like the clouds being rolled back and the
brightest sun shining. All will be revealed, everything
will be exposed and there will be no doubt about who or
what is God and who or what we are.
Are you looking forward to that
moment? The early Christians longed for that day, when
all the world would be changed. But are you ready?
I am anticipating having a
college student live with me for a month. She will be
arriving on Monday. When I made that decision to have
her stay, I went home that day and looked all around my
house and was ashamed. I was quite capable of living in
the disarray and clutter of my home, but would it be
hospitable for this guest from another country?
If you have seen the movie
Terminal with Tom Hanks, you will also experience one
person's concept of American inhospitality in the wake
of our fear of terrorism. In a light hearted way it was
enlightening and embarrassing to say the least. So, how
will we receive Jesus when he comes again. . . or is he
here right now, waiting to be received into your heart?
Is your spiritual home ready to receive this guest of
royalty and life?
This is the time of Advent. To
prepare your heart in hospitality for the coming of the
greatest guest of all. Jesus Christ - the light of the
world.